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Building a Blog: Essential Resources for Food Bloggers

I’ve compiled a list of some of THE MOST useful resources for food bloggers that have helped me build my blog. If you’re looking to start your own blog you can head to my ‘How to Start a Blog‘ page for a quick walk-through on how to set up your own self-hosted blog using SiteGround.

Disclosure: Some of the following links are affiliate links. This means that should you click on a link and make a purchase, I will receive a commission. Please know that I only recommend these products because I use them myself and find them to be of a high quality. Let me know if you have any questions!

The Look

The Genesis Framework allows you to quickly and easily build your website to your exact specifications. The guys at StudioPress also offer tonnes of support and tutorials to help you get it set and up and customized. You can also install a theme (there are over 60 to chose from) which will give your blog the exact look and feel you’re looking for. I use the FoodiePro Theme.

Essential Plugins and Tools

AkismetSpam is the worst, not just for you but for your readers as well. Akismet filters the comments you receive, getting rid of any nasty spam comments and leaves all of the good ones. Super simple, but super essential.

VaultpressVaultpress allows you to back up everything (I mean EVERYTHING) on your website, daily. You can sleep soundly knowing that, should something go wrong, you’ve got a copy safe and sound. It also runs security scans so you can be sure your site is safe.

YoastYoast is one of my favourite plugins that I get the most use out of. It helps you optimize your website and posts, helping them show up in Google search results and making them high quality for your readers.

Social WarfareThis little plugin makes it super easy to share all of your amazing content over the web, making you site easy to use as well as helping build traffic.

Nutrifox allows you to create nutrition labels quickly and easily for all of your amazing recipes. You simple copy and past the ingredients into the tool, and they do the rest for you. If there is an ingredient they don’t have, you can add it yourself. It’s a great little tool that also helps optimize your recipes for search engines. Also if you sign up for a years membership of Food Blogger Pro (check out down below) you get a Nutrifox membership FO FREEEE.

In my opinion Tasty Recipes is one of THE BEST recipe plugins going. It gives you everything you need to input recipes onto your site that are SEO ready. The recipe cards look beautiful AND professional and they’re also ready to print for anyone that wants them.

Pinterest is a fantastic tool for food bloggers and the Tasty Pins plugin allows you to optimize your recipe photos for Pinterest, search engines and screen readers. It also means that if someone else pins a recipe image from your site, that pin will have a optimized description ready to go, instead of pulling alt text.

Community

Food Blogger Pro is absolutely essential for anyone that is serious about food blogging. I don’t think I would have got this far without it. It’s a fantastic community that provides hundreds of videos that will help you set up your food blog. There’s also the forum, filled with hundreds of members, all willing to help you with any query or question you might have. You can only enroll at certain times of the year, but it is more than worth the wait in my opinion. Check it out!

Food Photography

My Camera – The Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF7This little camera has kind of changed my life. I don’t consider myself much of a photographer in general, but I knew that if I wanted my blog to be successful the photos had to look good. It gives you lots of the features you’d get with a DLSR but without the hefty price tag. It’s easy to use and compact, making it a great purchase if you’re not ready to commit to a big and expensive DSLR camera. Plus you can buy additional lenses, enabling you to get exactly the shot you want.

This camera is a little bit dated these days (I got mine in 2016) but there is an updated version (right here) that looks good and gets great reviews.

Panasonic LUMIX G 25mm F1.7 LensIt took me a longtime to realize that the reason my photos weren’t looking the way I wanted them to was because I didn’t have the right lens attached. Since I got this lens I’ve barely taken it off my camera. I use it for 99% of my food photography thanks to it’s low aperture number; it gives my photos that wonderful background blur that makes them look more appetizing and appealing. COULD NOT LIVE WITHOUT.

Love Your LensOne of the biggest things that has helped me with my photography is getting some lessons. I read tonnes of eBooks and online articles, but that is just not the way I learn best. I had a few one on one lessons with Jane at Love Your Lens and it taught me SO MUCH. Jane is a fantastic teacher that tailors her teaching to what you want to learn. I couldn’t recommend her enough. If you live in the Manchester/Cheshire area get in touch with her! And if you don’t, just checkout her blog for loads of handy tips, tricks and all things photography.

While I do learn better face to face, this little eBook has been a blessing for all of those moments in between. Written by the guys over at Pinch of Yum, Tasty Food Photography is a super detailed and clearly written eBook all about how to take the most appetizing and attractive food photos. It’s a great little resource to have on hand and has helped me so much.

PhotoboardsPhotoboards create beautiful and realistic photography backgrounds for all sorts of photography projects. There are loads of different styles to choose from each using different colours and textures. It’s a fantastic way to create atmosphere without forking out tonnes of money. I have ‘Splash‘ and ‘Roma‘ both in 60x60cm but I’ve got my eyes on a few more as well!

Social Media

TailwindUsing social media is essential when building traffic and sharing your content, but it can sometimes feel like it is ALL YOU DO. Tailwind for me has been a Godsend. Pinterest is my biggest traffic referrer by far and I believe that is all down to Tailwind. To start you can use it to schedule posts to Pinterest. They pick the best time for things to post so once you’ve added content to your schedule, they do the rest. You can schedule a weeks worth of content in less that an hour. YES PLEASE. They also have great little groups called Tribes which have been integral in helping me share content and build traffic. Plus they’ve recently set up a similar scheduler for Instagram. Hello two birds with one stone!

So there you go, that’s my list of essential resources for food bloggers. I use every single one of these resources, and I wouldn’t recommend them if I didn’t think they were good quality and valuable! I think they have been instrumental in helping me build my blog and I hope they can be of use to you to. If there’s anything else you think is useful let me know!